11
Office romances are never a good idea, whether you’re alive or undead. The walk of shame is still embarrassing, whether it takes place at dawn or at dusk.
—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace
I hauled myself out of bed early the next morning to visit Nola during prevampire hours. She usually left for work at the clinic around lunchtime, and I didn’t want to risk a run-in with Nik when I was still such a basket case. It was bad enough that Iris took one look at me when I walked into the house, all ragged and pale and distressed, and concluded that I’d contracted a horrible stomach virus. She spent the rest of her waking hours fussing over me and plying me with chicken noodle soup, which is exactly what you want to eat at two a.m.
Between the sleepless night and the early-morning doses of high-sodium condensed soup, I looked as if I’d been wrestling with a bear. At least, that’s the impression I got from Nola’s expression when she opened her front door.
“Wow,” she said, blanching and not even bothering to cover it. Instead of her peach-and-blue scrubs, she was wearing a blue tank top and a floaty green-and-white skirt, looking quite the picture of the modern young witch. “Gigi, darlin’, have you been drinkin’? I know I said the B-twelve would be a booster, but I didn’t mean to go out and test the limits.”
“Sadly, I am sober as a judge,” I grumbled, shoving my sunglasses on top of my head, into the mess of dark hair I’d piled up. “You offering?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked. “You twenty-one?”
“I thought the Irish didn’t really give a damn about that sort of thing. Weren’t you weaned on whiskey?” I snorted as she led me into her kitchen.
“Irish-American, you smartass,” she scoffed. “And the side of my personality that’s interested in holding on to my newly issued Kentucky nursing license has no plans to contribute to the delinquency of an almost minor.”
I dropped my bag onto the table and flopped into the kitchen chair. Nola, bless her soul, started a pot of coffee, a concession to Jed’s American need for a higher grade of caffeine than English breakfast tea could offer.
“Spoilsport,” I muttered into the kitchen tabletop, where I’d planted my face. “I haven’t slept. I had a really rough night at the office. And I haven’t been able to talk to Iris about it, because I don’t want her to march into my place of employment and demand a fifty-foot space bubble between me and a coworker who, as of last night, makes me uncomfortable. It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate the buffer, but it doesn’t exactly make me look like a professional. So, what were the results of your scans?”
“Nothing.” Nola sighed.
“Nothing?”
“Not a single caster in the office,” she said. “Even that weird yogurt lady.”
“Damn it!” I grunted. “But what was with all that grinning when you were shaking Margaret’s hand?”
“Because I could tell it was annoying her,” Nola said. “Gigi, this is good news. This means that people who have access to you every day are not trying to make Nik a murderer.”
“Well, that’s actually reassuring when you put it like that, thank you,” I said, nodding. “The problem remains that if my two prime suspects have been eliminated, I’m left with an unknown potential suspect with no discernible motive.”
“Look, don’t worry. We’ll keep researching. If there’s anything I’ve learned with this group, it’s that there is no enemy or magic or even force of nature that can’t be worked around, once they devote their energy to it.”
“Yeah, but people get hurt along the way,” I murmured. “I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“You can’t control that, Geeg,” she said. “And you’ll go mad if you try.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “So is there any way we can be proactive about this? Because I would love not to be attacked by the man I’m in deep, devoted like with . . . who may not be talking to me because I was sort of mean to him last night.”
“You are a very complicated girl, aren’t you?”
“Not intentionally. Now, can you answer the question?”
Nola thought about it for a long while, chewing her lip. “Yes.”
“Does it involve some sort of spell that ends up making a big red ‘A’ appear on their forehead? Because that would be helpful.”
“Well, magically, there’s not a lot I can do without knowing who I’m casting against. And frankly, I don’t like the whole threefold return on doing someone wrong, karma-wise. “
“Then I am confused. Also disappointed.”
“Have you ever studied the placebo effect?” Nola asked. “People take sugar pills, believing they’re taking medications, and thanks to the power of the mind, they actually feel the effects of drugs that aren’t even in their system?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with—ohhhhhhh.”
• • •
Nola’s plan was as brilliant as it was devious.
After showering thoroughly and putting on a more respectable outfit, I would go to work, as normal. Rather than having Nola cast an actual spell, I would stand out in the hallway with my coworkers and very loudly discuss a spell that Nola was planning to cast on the person causing so much trouble for my gentleman companion. Aaron and Jordan were appropriately rapt at my descriptions of the nervous sweats, stomach cramps, and other symptoms that would be inflicted upon said evildoer, living or undead. I didn’t know if they believed me or not, but I was their boss, and they were both too polite to call me a liar.
And since Aaron was about as discreet as a full-page newspaper ad, it only took a few hours for the story to make the rounds. As a fun side note, almost everybody in the office now avoided eye contact with me.
Now I just had to sit back and let said evildoer’s guilty conscience do my dirty work for me. Of course, doing some actual work, which had been absent from my last few nights at the office, would also be a nice gesture.
It took me a few hours, but I caught up on the tasks I’d abandoned in favor of my own personal telenovela the night before. I checked the search platform Aaron and Jordan built. I started construction on a bridge function that would allow users to track multiple family branches at the same time. And I shredded the research paper Marty had written on fonts before he could mail it to the regional office. Now we just had to come up with another pointless task that would keep him occupied for another week.
I left that particular brainstorm to Jordan and Aaron while I checked off my first major backup task as project leader. Every file that my team had touched since we arrived had been saved to an external drive, which would be placed in a safe, deep within the bowels of the office. I would have to do this once a month all summer to prevent catastrophic loss of our work, just in case every server at the Council’s disposal simultaneously crashed. It could happen.
In fact, if Marty figured out how to get around the encryption Aaron had set up to keep him out of the scanned files Jordan had archived, it might happen. For his part, Marty remained unaware of the measures we were forced to employ to protect our work from him thanks to his golden protected-by-Ophelia status. He remained friendly and cheerful. He didn’t sulk or give me longing looks from across the room. To me, this said that he definitely had not processed my no to his dinner invitation and he sincerely believed that I would be dating him at some point.
So yes, maybe I was a little enthusiastic about visiting some part of the building where Marty didn’t have clearance to breathe. On the long elevator ride to the lower floors of the Council office, I cradled the external drive in my hands as if it was the last egg of a near-extinct species of bird. I had to pass two armed guards and a retinal scanner to get to the safe, where I was blindfolded as the code was entered. And then I verified by signature on a digital pad that the drives had been secured. The various security precautions took a grand total of ten minutes. I was just glad we only backed up like this every month.
Free of my delicate burden, I boarded the elevator, humming absently along with the Muzak version of “Girl from Ipanema.” But three floors from my own office level, the elevator jolted to a stop.
“Gah!” I yelled, grabbing the safety bar on the side of the car to keep from face-planting on the floor. A wave of terror fluttered through my belly, making my legs go weak and watery. Was the car going to plummet to the bottom of the elevator shaft? How deep did it go? Why wasn’t some sort of alarm going off? I tried to employ all those awesome survival skills Cal had taught me. I didn’t want to panic, but damn it, this was how a lot of horror movies started, and I was not prepared for whatever killer virus, zombie horde, or ax murderer might be waiting for me outside the elevator door. I hadn’t had nearly enough caffeine for this.
I pressed the red emergency button, but it didn’t make a sound. I lifted the red emergency phone, but it didn’t have a dial tone. Suddenly and silently, the elevator doors slid open on a well-lit, zombie-free hallway. I stuck my head out of the elevator, and then, remembering that as far as I knew, the car could fall at any moment and decapitate me, I hopped out onto the strange new floor. The doors closed without incident, and I could hear the car ascending to the next floor. No matter how many times I pressed the up button, the car wouldn’t come back.
“Weird,” I muttered. I scanned the hallway and couldn’t see a living or undead soul, just a sign that read “Floor 2B Disposal Rooms.” I wasn’t sure what the disposal rooms were for, and I was certain I didn’t want to find out. Plausible deniability was a good thing.
“Cal, if this is some sort of test, I will tell Iris on you. A lot,” I muttered.
Of course, I’d left all of my weapons in my purse in my office. I was going to start wearing pants with bigger pockets. Then again, I was wearing a pencil skirt, so pockets were sort of a moot point. I moved quickly and quietly down the hall, toward the stairs. It was only three floors, right? I could make it up three flights of steps.
Well, I made it up one flight of steps. The door to my floor was locked, and the keypass wouldn’t respond to my security badge. No amount of pounding on the door got any attention from my office mates. The door to Floor 1B, however, was wide open, so I entered yet another unoccupied floor, labeled “Holding Cells and Interrogation Rooms.”
Just as I passed by the first interrogation room, the door opened, and a pair of arms shot out, dragging me inside the cold, gray cement-block room. I struck out blindly, landing a respectable left hook against the figure’s jaw and following through with my elbow.
“Ow!” he yelped.
Nik turned on the interrogation-room light and slammed the door behind us. I slapped at his shoulder. “Stop sneaking up on me!”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I was trying to lead you here with the elevator and the malfunctioning doors without being too obvious about it. You are not great with subterfuge.”
“Well, I’m sorry about your face. And the bitchiness last night. I was having an awful night, and I took that out on you, and that’s not OK,” I said, stroking my thumb over the split lip that was already healing.
“No, it is not, but you have also been through higher-than-average stress in the last few weeks. I forget sometimes how young you are and how human. Your nerves are bound to be frayed.”
“I’m going to ignore the implications of my youth and humanity as weaknesses and just let you hug me,” I said, as he pulled me close. I pressed my forehead into the hollow of his throat.
“Did we just have our first fight?” he asked, trailing his fingers down my spine.
“It was more of a minor disagreement, but sure, we’ll count it as a fight.”
His golden eyes twinkled in the harsh fluorescent lights as he toyed with the top button of my blouse. “And in a relationship, what generally follows a resolved fight?”
“So this is a relationship?”
He leveled a very serious gaze at me as he backed me against the wide metal interrogation table. “You know it is.”
“I don’t know that,” I told him. “Because I don’t know what we are.”
“You know what we are, Gigi,” he breathed against my lips, sliding his hands under my ass and lifting me onto the table.
“And what are we, Nikolai?” I asked, as he brushed his lips across mine.
“You are mine. And I am yours. As I have never belonged to anyone before, I belong to you,” he whispered, before sealing his lips over mine
OK, that still told me nothing, but it sure sounded great, and it was hard to think about vague implications when he was doing that thing with his tongue. My thighs curled around his hips, and I locked my ankles, enjoying the delicious friction this position afforded against his bulging zipper. This was not appropriate workplace behavior.
Nik traced the line of my jaw with the tip of his nose. “Did you know that this is one of the few rooms in the Council office without cameras?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want nice people to know what happens in here, would you?” I chuckled, surprised by the dark, husky edge to my voice.
Nik nipped a line across the seam of my lips. When his fangs popped down, I tentatively ran my tongue along the points, making him growl. His hands slid under my skirt, nails severing the sides of my panties. The shreds fluttered to the ground, and from the look on his face, Nik wasn’t even sorry.
He yanked my hips closer to the edge of the table, making the shackles attached there clank. I caught him staring at them with a wicked gleam in his eye. Biting the tip of my tongue, I curled my hand around his jaw and shook his head back and forth.
He shrugged. “It is a little much for your first workplace sexual infraction.”
“Oh, I love a man who can use big words. Come on, baby, talk nerdy to me.”
“Next time,” he swore, pushing me back on the table, spanning his fingers over my bare ass. He peppered kisses down my neck, his tongue following his hands as he unbuttoned my shirt.
“Tell me you locked the door,” I whispered against his head.
He nodded frantically, snagging the connecting lace between my lilac lace bra cups and snapping it with his fangs.
“I liked that one.” I grunted as the bra disintegrated onto the table.
“I will buy you one in every color,” he promised, yanking my skirt down my hips and tossing it over his shoulder.
I pressed my palms against the table, balancing my weight so I could rock my hips against him. I grabbed the tail of his shirt, pulling it over his head and mussing his perfect blond hair. His hand wrapped around my throat, pressing me down against the table as he traced a long line from my neck to my breasts, skimming the curve of each with his fangs, just enough to make me shiver. I twined my legs around his rib cage, urging him closer.
His fangs scraped against my belly, leaving a raised red trail of pleasure-pain against my skin. I heard the faint rasp of a zipper and then felt the hot, smooth weight of him against my thigh. He shimmied his hips, letting his pants fall to his thighs.
I reached between us, palming him, guiding him toward my wet, aching flesh. He thrust inside me with a groan, nibbling along the curve of my jaw. I bit my lip to contain my moan of absolute contented bliss, but then I remembered. Interrogation room. Soundproof walls.
He snapped his hips, and I let loose a throaty howl. He propped his elbows up on the table so he could watch me, clearly pleased that I’d made such a noise, if the bared fangs were any indication. I grinned, snaking my arms around his neck and pulling myself up to press against him.
Nik bucked his hips, nudging against my sweet spot with every roll. He slowly but surely pushed the collar of my blouse aside and let his fangs sink into my throat, just over the jugular. And I barely felt the pain, only the pull of my blood surging up to his mouth. It was as if there was some sort of string connecting the two locations, and it was pleasantly chafing against my clit with every pull.
I curled my hand around his head, clutching him tighter to my neck. His thrusts sent my ass sliding back over the cold metal. The contrast in temperatures gave me gooseflesh, making every movement its own mini-orgasm, leading to one violent spasm that rippled out from my center and curled my toes.
“Mine.” Nik threw his head back, lips red and wet, as he fell over the edge with me. He rested his forehead against mine. “Yours.”
The door flew open, and I froze, unable to move a muscle, as Marty strolled through the door. Nik moved between the two of us, so Marty wouldn’t have a clear shot of me or my bared bits.
“Gigi,” Marty said, ever so casually going over papers in a file folder without looking up. “You’ve been gone for a while. I was looking for you, and I thought I heard you in here—” He looked up.
Nik didn’t even have the decency to hike his pants over his exposed ass cheeks. He just smirked over his shoulder at Marty and said, “Is there something we can help you with, Morton?”
“Marty,” I squeaked.
“Right. Marky,” Nik drawled. “Do you mind?”
“I thought you locked the door,” I said, smacking his arm while I buried my hot, red face against his shoulder.
“G-Gigi, what’s going on here?” Marty stammered. “How could you—”
I clamped my hands over my face, apparently buying into the theory that if I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me or my destroyed bra hanging over the interrogator’s chair.
I heard Nik zip up his pants and the rustle of a shirt settling over his shoulders. “Leave now, Marky.”
“It’s Marty.”
I felt my own shirt being gently pressed over my bare chest. I opened my eyes long enough to see Marty shoot a poisonous look at Nik, then back out of the room and close the door behind him.
“I want the table to open up and swallow me.” I thunked my head against the metal. “Is that too much to ask?”
“It was an innocent mistake,” Nik told me, helping me slip back into my blouse. “I am sure Mikey will forget about it by tomorrow.”
“One, I don’t know what sort of office you’ve been working in, but seeing a coworker spreadeagled on a metal table is one of those things that stays with you for a while. Two, interrogation-table sex is never innocent. And three, oh, my God, I just realized you did that on purpose!” I exclaimed, smacking him.
“I would not say on purpose,” he protested, helping me step into my skirt. He turned me around so I rested my palms against the table as he zipped me. “I just did not prevent it from happening.”
“I can’t believe this.” I sighed. And since I couldn’t put my bra back on, I was going to be returning to my office with the girls running free. This was why I was not built for clandestine office sex: my lack of foresight and extra undergarments. “That guy—”
“Is infatuated with you and believes that you should be dating him.”
My hands stilled over the buttons of my shirt. “How did you know that?”
For the first time since Marty had interrupted us, Nik actually looked embarrassed. “You were so upset after your multiple coffee runs that I might have gone to your office and held your coffee cup to get a read on what happened while you were out. I saw the whole scene with Merle’s—”
“Marty’s—”
“Heartfelt confession and your horrified reaction. I just thought that if Mel saw that you are with someone else, with his own eyes, he will leave you alone.”
“OK, using my coffee cup as a conduit for your psychic abilities so you can spy on me is super-inappropriate,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Eh, that is debatable.”
“No,” I said, shaking my hair loose from its messy ponytail and trying to wrestle it back into submission. “It’s really, really not. And second, you didn’t just magically cure Marty’s crush on me. You just made it worse, because now you’re the reason I won’t go out with him, and you’ve opened me up to almost daily discussions of your faults and why he is a much better choice for me. Also, he could report me for violating about ten different office policies, which I am guilty of, to an insane degree.”
“I doubt very much that Ophelia will care, as long as we count this time as your coffee break. Our having sex is the least disturbing thing that has happened in this room in a while. And a lot of people have had sex on that table. Trust me. I touched it.”
I took a big step away from the table. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Well, give me a few minutes to recover, and I will give it another—ow!” He yelped when I smacked him with what looked like a big canvas purse that had been shoved under the table. “Easy with that!”
“Good night, this thing is heavy!” I exclaimed, as he took the bag from me and checked over its contents. “Are you actually carrying this thing around with you?”
“Yes, Ophelia keeps giving me evidence from the break-in cases to take home. And I do not want to be seen hauling items like this around.” He plucked a plastic bag from inside the tote, displaying a pewter fairy statue the size of my hand.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of thing you’d find in any self-respecting vampire’s house,” I said, as I slipped into my heels.
Nik chuckled. “That is what I thought, but maybe it is a recently turned vampire.”
“The thefts you’ve been investigating,” I said. “Who are the victims?”
He rooted through his man-bag and slid a list across the desk. None of these names looked familiar. And considering that my sister’s business served the majority of Half-Moon Hollow’s undead, it seemed unlikely that I’d never heard any of these names.
“Come upstairs with me,” I said, gathering his list and his fairy statue. I barely paid attention to the stairs or the security doors as I dragged him toward my office. Marty was mysteriously and blessedly absent from his desk.
If Aaron and Jordan were surprised to see me yanking a tall, blond, disheveled vampire behind me like an ill-behaved poodle . . . well, OK, they showed it quite a bit. Jordan’s eyebrows disappeared into her purple bangs, and Aaron’s mouth dropped open, letting his gum slide out onto the carpet. Charming.
“Guys, this is Nik,” I said, closing the office door. “Nik, this is Aaron, and this is Jordan, my coworkers.”
Jordan remained stone-still, but Aaron managed to lift his hand and wave it silently.
“We’re kind of in a cone of silence right now, if that’s OK with you two,” I said. “It will just take a few minutes.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Jordan said, shrugging.
Aaron stared at the ceiling. “What vampire?”
“That girl’s hair is all the colors of the rainbow,” Nik whispered, as I slid into my desk chair.
“Yes, and she happens to be a very nice girl who is very good at her job, so we’re going to avoid making any of the jokes or comments that may be on the tip of your tongue right now in order to prevent hurting her feelings, OK?”
“Aw, that’s nice, thank you, Gigi,” Jordan said, seeming sincerely pleased by the compliment.
“Cone of silence, Jordan,” I reminded her. “You heard nothing. Go back to thinking I undervalue your work, so you should try hard to impress me.”
“Too late!” Jordan scoffed. “I haven’t tried hard in weeks!”
“I was just going to say I would like to know how she dyed it,” Nik muttered. “It must have been complicated and time-consuming.”
“It was so worth it,” Jordan informed him.
Giggling to myself, I fired up my computer and pulled up a list of active local vampires.
Nik watched my fingers dance over the keyboard as multiple windows opened on my screen and mobilized to do my bidding. “Is this something you could get into trouble for?” he asked.
“Meh,” I said, jerking my shoulders. “It doesn’t fall under my job description, but since I’m technically using Council resources to do Council business, we’ll just call this an IT policy gray area.” I leaned back and called over my shoulder, “Cone of silence!”
“We see nothing!” Aaron called back.
“We hear nothing!” Jordan added.
“And might I ask why your underlings are so loyal?”
“I may have stumbled upon them making out in the copy room. My discretion was purchased with Red Vines and Starbucks gift cards,” I said over the clacking of my keyboard. “Come to think of it, this place is a hotbed of illicit sex and extortion. It’s better than HBO on Sunday nights.”
“Barely twenty, and you have already mastered the arts of intrigue and bribery. If you had lived during my time, you might have ruled the world,” Nik marveled, pulling a small red insulated cooler bag from his man-purse.
I scoffed. “Who says I won’t? Also, you forgot the art of parking-lot fisticuffs, which I have also mastered.”
Through all of this flattery, I searched through Nik’s list of names, but none of them showed up as confirmed Council constituents. I did some online searching, just to be sure, but as far as I could tell, none of the vampires named actually existed. Meanwhile, he was unpacking his cooler bag. I thought it was a weird time to have lunch, but what did I know about his liquid diet?
“I think the names are fake,” I whispered. “They have no credit history, no Council records, no recorded moves, nothing.”
“Why would Ophelia ask me to investigate crimes against people who do not exist?” he asked, pulling various artifacts out of his bag and putting them on my desk. The objects were all random home décor items. The fairy statue, a piece of pressed glass in the shape of a crescent moon, a broken photo frame.
“Well, have you seen any actual crime scenes yet, or is she just giving you objects as evidence?”
Nik frowned. “I have seen plenty of pictures of the crime scenes, and surely I . . . I cannot remember seeing any of them personally. That is very strange. Under normal circumstances, I would not investigate any situation without seeing the location with my own eyes. But when I try to remember seeing them this time around, I am just drawing a blank. It seems bizarre that I have not even thought of it before now.”
“And the objects Ophelia has had you inspecting? Have you seen anything when you’ve held them?”
Nik cleared his throat and glanced at Aaron and Jordan, who were studiously ignoring us. “I get a couple of flashes but nothing that would tell me anything about their origin.”
I picked up the fairy statue and examined it closely. “I think I recognize this,” I told him. “It’s from Jane’s shop. She’s been trying to get rid of them since she opened. She actually gave one to Ophelia last year for her birthday.”
“This belonged to Ophelia?” he asked.
“I think so.”
I turned around to check if Jordan and Aaron were watching. They swiveled their chairs around, acting as if they weren’t.
Nik held the fairy in his hands, and his eyes went all smoky. “Nothing. I am getting nothing.”
“Why would Ophelia give you a regift as evidence?”
“This whole investigation has been wrong,” he said. “I am making no progress at all. I do not remember making half of these notes. And Ophelia is not riding my ass about my lack of progress. You work for her, you know how she feels about progress.”
“Nik, have you ever seen a goose out in the wild?” I asked. “You ever chased it around?”
“You are saying that Ophelia is sending me on a wild-goose chase?”
“No, I just enjoy asking people random questions about their fowl habits,” I said, as my stomach suddenly rumbled, loudly enough to get Nik’s attention.
“Did you forget to eat again?” he said, nudging me.
“Maybe,” I said, wincing. “It’s been a busy night.”
“Gigi, you have got to take better care of yourself,” he chided me gently.
“I know.” I sighed.
“Which is why I brought you this,” he said, gesturing at the objects he’d pulled from his cooler bag: a small black enamel bento box with cherry blossoms on the top and black enamel chopsticks. “Cal said this was your favorite, before he realized I was interested in you and stopped the flow of all information.”
“Aw, you brought me lunch? That’s so sweet, but . . .” I cast a longing glance at my computer.
“You are going to take a break,” he said, wheeling my chair away from my desk.
“She skips lunch a lot; more often than I would say is healthy,” Jordan told Nik. “I think that’s why everybody keeps bringing her food. Sammy worries.”
“Traitor!” I shouted, but Jordan was positively unashamed. “Slander and lies!”
“Gigi,” Nik whispered in mock horror.
“She keeps her own soy sauce in the fridge, in case you forgot it,” Jordan added.
“I did forget it, thank you.” Nik rose and retrieved my soy sauce from the office fridge. He pulled my rolling chair down to the end of my desk and nudged the food in front of me.
“But . . . information!” I exclaimed, straining toward my computer.
“Not so funny when it’s your boyfriend dragging you away, huh?” Jordan crowed.
“Gigi,” Nik said, placing his hands on either side of my arms, effectively trapping me in my desk chair.
I smirked. The position had possibilities. I replaced the smirk with the poutiest, saddest puppy face I could manage.
He groaned. “Not that face.”
I ratcheted the bottom lip out just a little bit more.
He rolled his eyes and picked up the chopsticks. “You work, and I will feed you.”
“That’s so weird and adorable,” I told him. He gave a much-put-upon sigh and slid aside the box lid, revealing a Philadelphia roll and a green dragon roll. My mouth dropped open, and I blurted out, “I really love you.”
His smile could have lit up the world. “Really?”
I nodded, and he rolled my chair toward him with a sharp jerk that launched me against him. He crushed my mouth against his, swallowing my moans as I slid my fingers over his close-cropped hair. “That is all it takes to get you to confess your feelings? All I had to do was bring you sushi?”
“If you’d remembered the pickled ginger, I’d be giving you a lap dance right now.”
He growled and dropped his head. “I was this close!”
“I love you,” I told him, kissing his frown away. “I really, really do. Never forget that.”
“I would not,” he swore. “Never forget that I love you back.”
“This is so awkward,” Aaron whispered to Jordan.
“Shut up, it’s sweet!” Jordan hissed back. “They make such a cute couple.”
I kissed him one last time and rolled toward my desk, poising my hands above the keyboard. “Now, feed me.”
“Is this what our future will look like?” he asked, dipping a fat pink piece of salmon into some soy sauce. “I will spend my eternity taking a backseat to raw fish and random numbers?”
“Not all the time,” I promised him, delicately wrapping the fish between my lips and pulling it into my mouth with my tongue. “Only when I’m on a deadline.”
He cleared his throat, watching my mouth. “I think I can live with that.”
• • •
Two nights passed at work without a tabletop sexual incident. I marked it on my calendar with a smug little emoticon.
Of course, Marty called in sick for those two days, claiming to have the flu, which put off that awkward avoidance of eye contact. But on the bright side, no one came to escort me out of the office for pantsless interrogation-room shenanigans.
With Marty out of the office, Jordan, Aaron, and I held an emergency secret meeting over Sammy’s super mocha frappuccinos to determine our progress and try to figure out whether we could do a whole summer’s worth of work if he was sick for the rest of the week. (No.) But the good news was that we’d hit all of our checkpoint deadlines for the summer and were on track for the large-scale test in a few weeks.
It was sad that we had to resort to this sort of meeting behind Marty’s back, but he was still operating under the bulletproof umbrella of Ophelia’s protection. I thought maybe Aaron and Jordan felt guilty about it, because they kept giving each other pointed looks and nudging, as if they had something to tell me and neither wanted to be the one to break the bad news.
Finally, I put my pen down and said, “OK, what’s going on?”
Jordan tipped her rainbow hair toward me, only to have Aaron shake his head.
“Kids, use your words!” I cried.
“Knock-knock!”
Aaron’s big moment was interrupted by Jamie walking through our office door, holding a grease-stained bag from the Coffee Spot, an old-school diner downtown that served insanely awesome cheese fries.
“Hey!” I hopped up from my seat and threw my arms around him. “How did you get past security?”
“You know that’s not how most people greet their friends, right?” Jamie said, as I snatched the bag from his hands and handed it to Jordan. “I come bearing cheese fries.”
“How many vampire friends does she have?” Aaron asked Jordan quietly. Jordan shrugged. “And why are they always bringing her food?”
“We need vampire friends to bring us food,” Jordan said, chowing down on cheese fries.
“It is at the Council office,” I told Jamie. “But seriously, what are you doing here? Are you visiting Ophelia?”
“Yeah, I came to check up on her. She hasn’t been feeling well the last few days,” he said.
“That’s weird,” I noted, as Aaron and Jordan spread out Jamie’s offering to accompany our sandwiches.
“Well, our office mate Marty is out with the flu,” Aaron said. “Maybe it’s going around.”
“It doesn’t really work like that,” Jamie explained in a kind bro-to-bro tone. “Vampires don’t get sick.”
“Also, Marty doesn’t actually have the flu,” Jordan added under her breath. I stared at her for a long moment, wondering what, exactly, she knew about what had happened earlier that week. She stared right back, but her poker face was much better than mine, and I couldn’t get anything out of her.
“At least you know she’s not pregnant.” I laughed, trying to break the tension. I paused. “She can’t possibly be pregnant, right?”
“I am ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure,” Jamie scoffed. “But I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been herself for weeks.”
The small, petty, cynical side of me wondered how closely Ophelia’s “illness” was tied to Jamie’s looming departure for college. But before I could express this in a way that wouldn’t upset Jamie, the vampire herself appeared in our office doorway, mascara running down her cheeks and her hair in disarray. She was wearing baggy acid-washed jeans and a plain black T-shirt with sneakers. She looked as if she’d just done the walk of shame from A. C. Slater’s frat party.
Aaron’s and Jordan’s eyes went wide at Ophelia’s disheveled appearance. They immediately turned around and practically leaped into their desk chairs, turning their backs to our bedraggled boss. Apparently, they were taking the “see nothing, hear nothing” approach again.
“I need to talk to you,” Ophelia whispered. “Now. Please call Nola and have her meet us here.”
With that, she shuffled back down the hallway and out of sight. My mouth gaped as Jamie stared after her.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“Ophelia said ‘please,’ ” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket and dialing Nola’s number. “Ophelia never says ‘please’ to me. This is bad. This is very bad.”
“I’m going to go—I don’t know what I’m going to do, but that needs to be taken care of.” With that, Jamie dashed down the hallway after his broken-down lady love.
Nola made the four-block trip to the office from her clinic in record time. Jamie was actually concerned for Ophelia’s health and forced her to curl up on the pink-checked couch in her office with a warmed bottle of donor Type A. Ophelia refused to say anything more, claiming that she only wanted to make her “confession” once.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to make the connection between Ophelia’s symptoms and the rumor we’d spread about Nola’s curse on the caster who’d put Nik in his fugue states. In my defense, I’d long since removed Ophelia from my suspect list after Nola cleared her. Well, except for the part where she could kill me with her bare hands. She could still do that.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked, as Nola bustled into the office. I expected Nola to give Ophelia some sort of examination, but she’d simply perched on the arm of my chair, waiting. It said a lot about either the way she felt about me or how she felt about Ophelia.
Ophelia removed the ice bag that Jamie had so helpfully provided from her head and forced herself into a sitting position. “I hired a witch to put the spell on Nik,” she said, her voice trembling pitifully. “You were taking Jamie away from me. He was going to college, with you, away from me. I was just so angry, and there you were, smiling and happy all the damn time, because you were going to have him all to yourself at that stupid school. And I snapped. As a courtesy, Nik notified me when he came into town over Christmas to visit Cal. I trumped up the robbery cases to have an excuse for him to come back to town. I hired the witch, and she cast the spell. I didn’t mean it. It all happened so fast.”
“I imagine that sort of deal took at least a few e-mails to iron out details,” Nola deadpanned. “It couldn’t have happened that fast. What exactly did the witch do?”
Ophelia sighed. “After Iris was hospitalized, you developed a habit of donating blood to the blood bank near your college campus every three months.”
A horrible sinking sensation took hold of my stomach. “Oh, no.”
“I arranged for one of your donations to be ‘misdirected’ and sent here. If it makes you feel any better, it took quite a bit of bribery and coercion to persuade the phlebotomist to hand over your pint of blood. The witch used it to put Nik on your trail, so to speak. Without knowing why or remembering how, he would attack you and continue to attack you until you were dead. But unbeknownst to us, he was already on your trail. He knew you, had feelings for you, and that complicated the spell. The witch had to improvise, and little by little, we’ve lost control of the situation. Magic is a living, breathing thing, and it has mutated beyond what we expected. The original intent of the spell is there; Nik will keep on attacking you. But he’s fighting it. The more he remembers about your first encounters, his first blush of feelings toward you, the more the spell tries to reestablish itself, and the more violent the attacks become.”
Jamie’s face had gone bone-white as Ophelia described putting a magical hit on me without any remorse or regret. My stomach churned but not for myself—for Nik and what they must have done to him to put him in this state. The edges of my vision went red and hazy, and it was all I could do not to lunge at Ophelia.
“Was it a Renart?” I asked.
Ophelia shot me an incredulous look and then nodded.
I glared at her. “I traced the family to this area. With the genealogical information that you knew I would be handling this summer. Honestly, it’s like you wanted to be caught.”
“It was a Renart,” she said, eyeing me carefully. “We’ve tracked the family for years, in case they decided to return to their old tricks. We have to protect our interests.”
Suddenly, Jamie sprang up from his seat and threw his chair against the wall, shattering the chair and making a considerable dent in the wall, not to mention making Ophelia flinch. His fangs were fully extended, and for the first time since he was turned, he looked ready to rip out throats.
He placed his hand on my arm and squeezed gently. “I’m so sorry, Gigi,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to say. I’ll find a way to help you make this right, I promise.”
Ophelia’s voice wavered. “Jamie.”
“Don’t,” Jamie growled. “Don’t talk to me.”
He swept from the room in the most vampirelike state I’d ever seen him in. Ophelia seemed to shrink in her chair, looking very young and sad and vulnerable. And I just couldn’t find it within me to give a damn.
“Why Nik?” I asked, through gritted teeth.
Ophelia practically whispered, “I knew that his gift involves him going into a sort of hypnotic state to receive information from the objects he touches, which made him more open to suggestion without completely scrambling his brain. He didn’t enter into the curse willingly, if it makes you feel any better. The witch stepped in while he was reading an object with a particularly complicated history and cast while he was out of it.”
“What did you give him?” Nola asked.
“The Hope Diamond.”
“I thought that was in the Smithsonian?”
“That’s a copy,” Ophelia said. “Council officials took possession of the actual stone more than fifty years ago to protect humans from it.”
Nola frowned. “Because anyone who owns it dies?”
“Common misconception. The diamond just makes the owner more susceptible to magical energy. And with its multiple owners and tragic history, Nik was under long enough for the witch to cast.”
“OK, so what do we do to break the curse? True love’s kiss? Magic fleece? Killing the witch who cast the spell? Killing the vampire who hired the witch who cast the spell?” I asked, giving Ophelia the death glare.
“Killing the target fulfills the requirements of the curse,” Ophelia said. “And if that doesn’t work, there’s a sort of back-door solution for this kind of spell. An act of loving sacrifice from either party usually nullifies the magical agreement.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s open for interpretation. I told you, I made a hasty decision to start this process. It’s not like it came with an owner’s manual!” she cried.
“So who is the Renart witch who cursed him? I’d like to talk to her. Or at least have Nola talk to her. Is it Margaret?” I asked. “It’s Margaret, isn’t it? She’s awfully witchy.”
“The witch isn’t important,” Ophelia said.
“The hell she isn’t!” I yelled.
“She isn’t! I can’t tell you about her anyway. I signed a nondisclosure agreement.”
“There are magical nondisclosure agreements?” I asked.
“The spell is cast.” Nola shrugged. “There’s no magical undo key, Gigi. We’ve talked about this. Our best option is to try to break it or fulfill it. Or you and Nik could separate. If he went to another continent, put enough distance between you, it might reduce the pull.”
“Blood magic is powerful.” Ophelia shook her head. “It will only get worse. If Nik doesn’t complete his task, fulfill the curse, he will slowly go insane. He will lose bits of his memory, until he no longer remembers you or his past or even his own name.”
I refused to cry in front of Ophelia. That was the only thing that kept me from breaking down right there. This was a fairy tale from hell, complete with cursed princes and witches and insanity. What was I going to do? What would Cal do in this situation? What would Iris do?
I closed my eyes and listened to Ophelia chatter about Nik’s slow descent into madness. Iris would find a solution. Iris would stop wallowing and figure it out. So that’s what I would do. She would also find a way to get back at Ophelia, even if it cost her a limb.
“Why are you telling us all of this now, Ophelia?” Nola asked. “You’ve sat back and watched for months as Nik and Gigi struggled with this. Why come forward now?”
“It’s the curse you put on whoever did Gigi harm. I’ve never felt so ill before.” Ophelia groaned. “Even when I was human, I’ve never felt such pain in my belly or tightness in my chest. My head is pounding, and everything aches. Even though I know it’s not possible, I feel like I could die. Please remove whatever spell you’ve placed on me. I’ve told you everything you need to know. Or at least, everything I can tell you. That should count for something.”
Nola stared at her but said nothing.
“Well?” Ophelia cried.
Nola shrugged. “That’s not how it works. You just have to suffer through it until the curse on Nik is broken, however that happens.”
Ophelia’s face crumpled just a bit before she managed to get it back under control. “I understand.”
“Good luck with that, Ophelia. I’ll see you tomorrow, dark and early,” I said, pushing up from my chair and striding from the room with my middle finger in the air.
Nola followed close on my heels. “Are we going to tell her there’s no spell on her?” she asked quietly as we walked toward the elevator. “And that the symptoms are all in her head?”
I shook my head, pursing my lips. “Nope.”